A grab bag well worth dipping into and a testament to the still-thriving art of book design.
The irreverent crew from the long-running satirical newspaper and website present a compendium of mock encyclopedia entries, lavishly illustrated.
Much like any recent episode of Saturday Night Live, this faux textbook serves up a fair share of both hits and misses, although those designations will undoubtedly vary according to readers’ particular interests. Those who don’t find a graph of family relations hilarious (“Son: Male child who slowly turns into his father by not living up to his father’s expectations”) may snicker at the pithy definitions that line the margins of each page (“IMAX: Type of widescreen cinematography that makes some nothing suburb feel like it’s getting somewhere”). There is plenty of political satire, entertainment satire and incredibly detailed medical diagrams that could fool the unwary at first glance but that upon closer scrutiny contain labels like, “Podiatry: Field specializing in those afflicted with feet,” and “Iris: Thin tissue whose pigment actual careers and livelihoods have been based on.” While much of the text provides the sharp wit and oddball ramblings that The Onion has made its bread and butter, the true standout feature of the book is its artwork. This volume begs to be read in actual book format instead of on an electronic reader; miraculously, for the digital age, it manages to capture some of the thrill of skimming encyclopedias, Ripley’s Believe It or Not! collections and other beloved fact/trivia books from the mid-to-late 20th century. And when you do come across a glimmer of the heartfelt, as in the entry on how Frank Lloyd Wright lost the love of his life, it makes the browsing experience that much richer.
A grab bag well worth dipping into and a testament to the still-thriving art of book design.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-316-13326-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 29, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2013
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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